Cancer Deaths

The main news story on breakfast news this morning is about lung cancer now being the main cause of cancer death in women. This is obviously a terrible thing, isn’t it? A doctor came on explaining the demographics: many decades ago more men than women smoked and now we are seeing the results of women catching up in that respect. He pointed out that there is usually a large delay between smoking and this kind of cancer death, though neglected to mention that the delay is often a life-long one. Deep in this blog you’ll find a graph with lung cancer deaths along one axis and age along the other. People can die of it at any age, but the bulk of them die when they’re over 70. Now, while death of any kind is a terrible thing, are these new statistics a terrible thing too?

That many people die of cancer now is because they’re not dying of the killers of the past. Anyone who has done some research into family history will know about that. Consider for a moment the possibility that an increase in lung cancer deaths in women in the above demographic might be because many of them are not dying of something else. In fact the woman they had on the show had been cured of breast cancer before her lung cancer was discovered. Breast screening, smear tests and the resultant treatments have hammered those kinds of cancers and, of course, the most difficult one to cure remains. Life is 100% fatal – remember that next time some of these TV dipsticks start shouting statistics at you. It is arguable then, that this increase in deaths from lung cancer can be seen in a positive light.

Let me illustrate: Kevlar vests are introduced during a war. Statisticians bemoan the increase in the number of deaths from head wounds.

SF Wars

I found some goodies in the post when we got back. Here we have SF Wars edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates. My story in here, The Rhine’s World Incident, was first published in Subterfuge.

War is becoming increasingly 'SF-ized' with remotely controlled attack drones and robot warriors already in development and being tested. Over the past 100 years the technology of war has advanced enormously in destructive power, yet also in sophistication so that we no longer seem to live under the constant threat of all-out global thermonuclear cataclysm. So what will future wars be like? And what will start them: religion, politics, resources, refugees, or advanced weaponry itself? Watson and Whates present a gripping anthology of SF stories which explores the gamut of possible future conflicts, including such themes as nuclear war, psychological and cyberwars, enhanced soldiery, mercenaries, terrorism, intelligent robotic war machines, and war with aliens.All the stories in this collection of remarkable quality and diversity reveals humankind pressed to the limits in every conceivable way.It includes 24 stories with highlights such as:The Pyre of the New Day' - Catherine Asaro.The Rhine's World Incident' - Neal Asher. Caught in the Crossfire' - David Drake. Politics' - Elizabeth Moon.The Traitor' - David Weber.And others from:Dan Abnett, Tony Ballantyne, Fredric Brown, Algis Budrys, Simon R. Green, Joe Haldeman, John Kessel, John Lambshead, Paul McAuley, Andy Remic, Laura Resnick, Mike Resnick & Brad R. Torgersen, Fred Saberhagen, Cordwainer Smith, Allen Steele, William Tenn, Walter Jon Williams, Michael Z. Williamson, Gene Wolfe.

Downton Abbey

Just before we headed back from Crete, Greek TV was showing episodes of various British (or English speaking) TV shows. They had Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey, Upstairs Downstairs and Wallander. I avoided the last of these because I didn’t want to see all the emoting, but watched the first two and enjoyed them both. Back here we borrowed the first series of Downton Abbey from Caroline’s parents and have nearly watched it all the way through.

I know it probably doesn’t do much for my street cred but I’m enjoying it immensely and want to see the rest. Nice one Mr Fellows. 

Jerry Bauer

Quite a while ago I did a blog post concerning a photographer called Jerry Bauer who took my first 'author photograph' (the one here). It seems that there isn't much about this guy on the Internet and, as a result, I keep getting people contacting me concerning rights to his photographs. They want to be put in contact with his son Jonathan Bauer. Unfortunately I lost contact details through various changes of computer in the past. So, if anyone out there knows those contact details could they please get in touch using the email at the bottom of my biog on the right.

Maria Tsouraki-Antonakaki

So, Elly told us that the wife of a lawyer friend of her husband Nectarius has written a book and wants to publish it in English ... or something ... so much gets lost in translation when the subject is specialized. The lawyer and wife wanted to talk to me, apparently.

Nectarius and Elly are nice people, generous, and we have enjoyed their company, kazanis and gifts of raki for years. For example, the two kazanis we’ve had here over the last two weekends weren’t for Nectarius’s raki. He attended yesterday’s and at the end of it was mortified not to be able to give us raki because he has run out and won’t be making any until after we’ve left. My response to this approach, therefore, wasn’t my present, ‘I will only read hard copy of published books and comment on them, or not.’ I said I was prepared to look at maybe a couple of chapters and maybe pass them on to someone if they’re of interest, and handed over my contact details.

On Friday we got a phone call from Manolis, the lawyer, assisted in language by a younger lawyer called Yorgos. They invited us for a meal in Sitia. We thought, what the hell it’s something different, and accepted. We were to meet on Saturday in Sitia square by the statue, at 7.00 PM where they would recognize me because they had been checking me out on the Internet. We duly turned up there were a young guy eyed us for a while then approached. Maybe he did not recognize me at first because, as Manolis pointed out later, they had looked at the terrible picture of me on Wikipedia (get it changed, Manolis said, you look like a really old man there). Next Manolis turned up and we trooped over to a harbour front taverna called Gorgios where Maria and her young son Stelios awaited.

While we ate pasta and drank white wine I tried to get a handle on the situation. It turns out that Maria has written three books that have been published in Greece. She handed over a copy of her latest – pictured here – and it’s one I would love to read in English. It’s about Italians occupying Sitia during the war (the town we were in at that moment and one lying only twenty minutes drive from our house). This book apparently sold 5,000 copies, which I’m guessing is pretty good in a country where book reading seems a rarity. The cartoon on the front depicts Mussolini and of course I was reminded of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres, and I have to add that we also learned of another interesting authorial connection: a close relative of Maria on her father’s side was the butcher on Spinalonga – the island leper colony in Victoria Hislop’s book.

Anyway, the book pictured here, and the two before it, are not the ones with which she wants to break into the English-speaking market. It is her latest, which seems to be a biography about a rather conflicted Greek character. This guy was confused about his sexuality from a very young age which, as you can imagine, went down really well in Orthodox Greece. His life, as far as I can gather, was traumatic. Some incidents illustrate this: a sex-change operation in Morocco with a lack of anaesthesia and during which he had to be tied to a bed, an attempt to rescue two boys, in Muslim North Africa, who had been accused of homosexuality and were to be hanged. This character is now a wealthy female notary in Athens. Seems to me this is the kind of stuff that is ticking all the right boxes for Guardian readers all across Britain.

Now the problems: the book is in Greek so I’ve no real idea how good it is, nor how well it will translate. My advice was for her to write a synopsis, get that and two sample chapters translated into English, whereupon I would try to find out who in Britain might be interested. Publishers and agents please note, if this book is any good you have the added benefit of being able to write-off trips to Eastern Crete against expenses!

Note: the title of the book shown reads in phonetic English as Parafono Embatirio. The first word seems to be dissonant or discordant while the second is a military march (music). I would guess the English title would be Discordant March, Tuneless March or something like Marching out of Step.

Packing Up

Wednesday 17th October

Interesting to see how in Cuba the government is allowing people to travel more widely. However, people in useful professions, like doctors, will face restrictions on their travel. So the ZAs (zero assets) are allowed to travel but probably can’t afford to, while the SAs (Societal Assets) are firmly controlled. Familiar?

I have to say something about this. Planet hunters have discovered a world in a system where four suns are in orbit about each other. A presenter, talking to some ‘expert’ involved said something about it being like science fiction, whereupon the ‘expert’ replied, ‘This is stranger than science fiction.’ Well fuck you matey. I might not have used four suns, but only two weeks ago I was writing about a system with a white dwarf and black dwarf orbiting each other and in turn orbited by a red dwarf, the whole system acting like some giant stellar food processor to mince up asteroids and worlds and shepherd them into an immense gas and dust ring. Go read some science fiction Mr Expert. Dickhead.

Thursday 18th October
I have suffered from acne rosacea for years but whether that is what I have now I have no idea. It’s changed, headed off to from around my nose towards my ears and on my chin, the spots are less like pimples and more like eczema. I’ve taken the various drugs to keep this under control and, as is usual, they stop working properly after I’ve been taking them for a while. I’ve tried all sorts of topical skin treatments, some of which have helped and some of which have aggravated the problem. One of the best topical treatments I use I didn’t learn from a doctor, and that is sticking baby powder on my face (the talc has to be fine). The powder sticks to the spots themselves and remains there when I wipe the bulk of it off. It conceals them and dries them out, and they’re much reduced when it drops off later. However, best of all for this condition is getting my face into sea water. The spots heal and fade. Now I’m not swimming just about every day the spots are flaring up again so I’m trying an experiment. I’ve made strong brine from local sea salt and intend to put that on my face every morning. It stings like a bastard. I hope it works.

Friday 19th October
It’s slightly cooler today than it has been over the last week, at 20C inside and 23C outside at 9.45AM, but I’m still sitting here in shorts and T-shirt as I get on with my work. After my efforts revamping our stove it looks like we won’t be using it this year (though I’ll have to fire it up at least once to cure the heat paint) because we are only here for another six days. Meanwhile it seems the Greeks know we’re heading away so are having their kazanis earlier just to ensure I struggle with my latest attempt at temperance. There was also a general strike yesterday which I’m hoping will not be protracted and won’t be occurring on the day we head back, which could screw things up a bit.

Things to do: I have to put netting over the citrus trees to protect them from winter winds that tend to frazzle them and kill off young fruit. I need to get some varnish on shutters that are peeling. I need to seal some cracks around a step in our roof, which I wanted sorted this year but wasn’t done because our builder went AWOL. I need to plant out some of the pot plants and shift the rest to the front garden where it’s quite damp. I need to stop my regular currency transfers because I don’t want any more than the minimum to cover bills sitting in a Greek bank. I must decant my large amount of chilli sauce into plastic bottles for transport back to England. Then I have to remember what other bits and pieces have to go back and pack them, knock off the power and the water, and go. It’s sad.

But then, back in England there are things to enjoy: always something to watch on TV, Chinese and Indian food either a short drive away or delivered to our door, Brussels sprouts with a Sunday roast, fish and chips in Hastings or Brighton, cheaper shopping with a lot more variety, comfy carpets and gas central heating coming on automatically every morning and, of course, constant fast Internet I will be pigging out on for months on end.

Tuesday 23rd October
I’ve just started on the packing. That’s two securely-wrapped 1.5L bottles of chilli sauce sitting in the case I used for my hand luggage on the way out here which in turns sits inside my suitcase. This time I won’t pack our various rechargers and other electrical items around them, because last time customs felt the need to examine a large bottle of liquid surrounded by wiring in the middle of a suitcase. I wonder if they thought the pomegranates in there too were fragmentation grenades.

I’ve been watching the BBC World’s take on the US election campaign. The presentation has been thoroughly partisan – obviously in BBC terms Obama is Luke Skywalker while Romney is Darth Vader. Next the presenters went into shock when Obama got a spanking in the first presidential debate and thereafter were struggling to hide their bias. I wonder if they had received complaints. In their cloistered group-think world it must be difficult to comprehend that an awful lot of people out here in the real world don’t agree with them. In some of their ‘reasoned debates’, however, they’re not so careful. You get wall-to-wall lefty liberals who still think Keynesian economics, high government spending, state control and high taxes all pave the way to socialist utopia, and who attack anyone who says, ‘Hang on, maybe spending more than their tax take is why governments are in debt?’

It absolutely hammered down with rain here yesterday and last night and I put the stove on for the first time. Shortly after that I put on the bathroom and kitchen fans and opened the window to get rid of the fumes from the curing paint. Today we have what is about standard for an English summer: cloud and sun, wet and the temperature struggling to get past 20C. Now for that English winter...

Beaches and Booze

Wednesday 10th October

No swimming or beach time yesterday since it was cloudy, not particularly warm (relatively) and most of the beach had gone anyway, as you can see.

Upon mentioning this to Stelios at the Gabbiano I learnt something I hadn’t heard about the beach here. What I had heard was that the building of an enclosed harbour for the boats and a breakwater to one side of the little area beside it changed the currents and resulted in the sand of the main beach being steadily eroded away and deposited over there. However, though this might be true, it now appears that a dredger used to suck up loads of sand in and about the harbour and that this was then deposited along the main beach. Since this stopped four years ago, because, of course, there’s no money to pay for it, the situation with the main beach has been steadily getting worse.

The cloud yesterday only sprinkled our windscreen on the way back home last night, but now the rain has arrived. I woke at about 5.00 to the sound of thunder and a steady downpour. This morning at 8.30 it’s grey and drizzly but the thunder has stopped. When I got up I first checked our stove pipe for leaks, found none, then spotted a pool below one of our roof windows. I’ll have to check that out when I go up to pull a plastic bag over the chimney pot – no need for the stove yet since the temperature outside is 18 and inside it’s 23.

Thursday 11th October
Why the surprise about some Taliban punk shooting a teenage girl through the head because she is bright, well-spoken and campaigns for female education? These patriarchal bullies and murderers are frightened of the mysterious packages they’ve turned their women into, and want them dim and blinkered because if they’re educated they’ll be much harder to persuade into a Semtex waistcoat. Wankers.

Friday 12th October
I’m being a good boy now and pushing myself to adhere to my target of 10,000 words a week. Yesterday, because I had to take Caroline to the dentist at 12.00, I was 1,300 words short of my target for that day. However, because I’d done just over the 2,000 on each of the preceding days I only had to do another 952 words to hit my weekly target, which I’ve done. Penny Royal II is now just 300 words away from 100,000. I also have a few sections already started, along with some notes, so on Monday I can dive straight into a space battle and thereafter advance the plot to its final physical destination ... which happens to be a Polity factory station called Room 101, which was also supposedly destroyed during the prador/human war...

Saturday 13th October
The EU being given the Nobel Peace Prize is yet another case of politicians being given credit for something that has happened despite them. Much was made in a BBC discussion (during which there was just the one token anti-EU speaker) of how war between European countries is now unthinkable, laughable. One idiot even asserted that there were only two choices: the EU or war. The truth is that political and economic integration aren’t the reasons Germany hasn’t invaded Poland lately. The real game changers are global communication, transport and education. We all know that European politicians enjoy a good war and have been getting their hands dirty elsewhere in that respect since the last big one. But they cannot get us to agree to a war with close neighbours we see every day on TV. They cannot demonize people we can chat with at the press of a button. They can’t get us to hate people we can see after an hour or two on Easyjet or in the Channel Tunnel.

Of course, another reason European war would be difficult: the politicians who would take us to war are held in utter contempt and many people are smart enough now to see through their lies. They haven’t really changed since Brutus shoved a knife into Caesar. They are still ideologues or thieves, or both. Whether you think it a good thing or a bad thing, the Arab Spring wasn’t brought about by politicians but by mobile phones and Facebook.

Finally, the presentation of this prize to the EU has pushed the Nobel awards further into irrelevance. I mean, didn’t Al Gore get something? Like just about any award you can name it is highly politicized and often risible.

Monday 15th October
They had a kazani here by our house over the weekend. For those who don’t know, this is when they fire up a still and turn hundreds of litres of fermented grapes into a large amount of raki, meanwhile drinking the stuff and eating lots of barbecued food. It started at about midday on Saturday. We avoided it during the afternoon, went off for a meal at about five, then came back and joined in at about 6.30. Much raki and food was thereafter consumed until maybe midnight. The next morning they continued stilling the raki at 6.00AM. We wandered out at about 10.00 feeling a bit crappy, drank coffee and smoked cigarettes until midday, whereupon it kicked off again for a few hours. We returned to our house at about 2.00 and spent the rest of the day not doing very much.

This has basically confirmed my growing aversion to booze. I enjoyed some of it but spent more time feeling like crap because of it, sometimes a bit depressed, disinclined to do stuff, feeling like I’d knocked my health down again. It’s one of the penalties of growing older. I’m reminded of Caroline’s grandma saying she didn’t give up booze and cigarettes – they gave her up – or of my father who stopped smoking because it interfered with him being able to play his clarinet or saxophone. Drinking is okay when you’re younger, when hangovers are either nonexistent or you recover in a matter of hours, but when you enter the time of the two-day hangover; when the feeling crap outweighs the feeling good and the former stops you doing the stuff you really want to do, it’s time to think very carefully about your lifestyle.

Congratulations to Felix Baumgartner! I watched his jump on the TV and just from that perspective it gave me the heebie jeebies. It is nice to see that the ‘right stuff’ still exists.

Tuesday 16th October
I finally bit the bullet yesterday and cut all the grapevines off the pergola, dug up one of the two of the plants and severely chopped back the rest of the other. Having a grapevine like that is all part of the Mediterranean thing but up here is simply a pain. It requires lots of pruning, insecticide and fungicide, and hasn’t produced more than a handful of grapes. Because we’re quite exposed up here the usual course of events is a nice growth in early spring whose shade we avoid because we want the sun, an ensuing massive spurt of growth I then need to hack back, a scattering of grapes beginning to grow, then along comes a hot dry wind for two or three days which frazzles and rips apart the leaves and kills the grapes, whereupon we spend the rest of the year clearing up the mess every day. It had to go.

I’m well past the 100,000 word mark on Penny Royal II, and preparing for the particle cannons to open up...

Deadwood and Parasites?

Wednesday 3rd October

Both stove glasses were cracked, the bolts that tightened the clamps to hold those glasses in place had rusted solid, there was rust elsewhere, heat-resistant seals were falling apart and the whole thing looked pretty crappy:

I managed to find new sealing material here, bought new bolts, drilled out the old ones and re-tapped the holes, cleaned off all the rust, re-sprayed with heat-resistant paint, fitted seals and glass and now the thing is as good as new:

Thursday 4th October
Caroline and I watched and enjoyed the first season of Deadwood with its sleezy depiction of that town in gold rush America. Set design and clothing, in fact all the physical details were superb. It has some excellent actors too like the hotel owner I always remember as the genetic designer from Blade Runner and the doctor who I always remember as the Harkonnen’s mentat in the film of Dune and, of course, the central supporting pillar of all this: Ian McShane as the saloon owner Al Swearengen. My only gripes concerned my inability to understand some of the talk and some holes in the plot. I understood that the slightly antiquated way of speaking added to the general atmosphere, but when it came out of the mouth of someone playing the drunken Calamity Jane I understood none of it. As for plot holes, the most glaring was when Al Swearengen makes the illogical and thoroughly out of character decision to back off on stealing a gold claim because the sheriff, Bullock, would make a good ‘front man’.

In season II it seems to me that they’ve made the mistake I’ve often seen in other series: those producing it decided to give us more of what they think makes their series a success, and got it wrong. I’m guessing that the decisions made at this point were by committee rather than by someone with a clear vision of where the series was going. In this case they’ve gone for more atmosphere which apparently means rambling speeches from the ‘characters’ to say in twenty-five words what could have been said in five. The result of this has been that the frankly poor plot of this season is suffering even more. I’ll give you an example: I just watched an episode where the leader of a group of miners decided to tar a black man, who had only just appeared on the scene, and the back-story of why this happened simply wasn’t there. This event had no connection at all to the miners’ earlier anger at a county commissioner who was threatening their gold claims, and the evident anger of their leader at this black man wasn’t at all explained. Also, adding insult to injury, Swearengen’s role over these episodes, after a rather silly and weakly justified fight with Bullock, has been to suffer bladder stones. I do hope this season improves now he’s recovering.

Friday 5th October
Here’s an update on the news for my American readers. The people at Night Shade Books are looking forward to bringing The Owner Trilogy to print in the US and have scheduled The Departure for publication Feb 5, 2013 with Zero Point following May 7, 2013 and Jupiter War September 3, 2013 (catching up with publication of that last book in Britain). Nicely keying into that my short story The Other Gun will be appearing in Asimov’s April/May issue that year with, of course, mention of these books in attached biog. It should be an interesting year with those three books slamming into the American market in rapid succession. In essence this should work as quite a profile-raising exercise.

Monday 8th October
I just watched the lift off of a commercial resupply rocket heading for the space station. I have to admit to being tickled to see that the robot craft its taking up there is called ‘Dragon’. Of course the name probably stems from the fire-breathing version, but I can fantasize about someone on the project choosing the name from their SF reading.

I notice someone put graffiti on a badly painted wall in the Tate Gallery. I don’t understand why this is news – surely a coat of white wash will sort it out?

Tuesday 9th October
I’ve just cleared 93,000 words with Penny Royal II and my characters have still yet to arrive at a particular destination where the end game of this book is to play out. I am just entering what I’ll call a precursor punch-up with a bit of war time history on the side. I have been enjoying detailing in these books a Polity bioweapon, based on a prador parasite, and delivered by assassin drones made in the shape of that parasite. Blame my winter reading of that blog ‘Parasite of the Day’.

Into Octomvrios

Wednesday 26th September

I’ve been reading much more lately. I read Terry Pratchett’s Snuff and it was a book I didn’t want to end; I read one about the campaign Alexander the Great in Afghanistan that started out seeming crudely simple but then grabbed me and had some interesting parallel’s with the present day; and I’ve read some other books I’ve enjoyed immensely. However, for every book I’ve read and enjoyed there’s been one I’ve made an attempt on – reading maybe a hundred pages – then finally put aside.

Was it that the characters were unbelievable, the history inaccurate, that I couldn’t picture the scenes in my mind, that the plot was daft or too obvious? No to all of these. Every time it was because despite my efforts it failed to engage – it was boring. This is why I sometimes struggle to fill out a review of something that did engage to the end. Really I should just say I enjoyed said book and will buy (or otherwise obtain) further books from that writer. All the rest is pointless decoration.

Thursday 27th September
It’s nice to see that finally, grudgingly, governments are beginning to admit to the real economic problems their countries face. A year ago it was all about the greedy banks causing the crash, which in essence is true in the same sense as pneumonia being the infection that brings a cancer patient to the edge of death. The real problem, the cancer, is governments overspending, bloated state sectors and far far too many people used to sucking on the state teat whether through welfare, the NHS or its equivalents or by being employed in the ever expanding public sector. Of course now those same governments face a dilemma. They know that they have to cut their spending but the voters they’ve bribed are objecting to this. Instead they fiddle around the edges, try to squeeze more money out of the people who actually generate wealth rather than waste it, increase business-killing taxes and talk blithely about financial stimulus. Politicians only spend on the promulgation of their particular ideology, hence the fucking windmills spreading across Britain, or on feathering their own nests. Their spending always fails to generate more wealth, and every time they do something ‘new’ they just create another stratum of bureaucracy to drain their country of wealth.

Friday 28th September
What I want to know is when is someone going to invent a device that records smells in the same way as a camera? I am of course aware of just how complicated such a task would be and I’m guessing that someone is already working on such a project now. When this machine is available I want one and with it I’ll take my first smellograph of this plant:

The name I’ve been given for it here is night flower. It doesn’t look like much but when it’s flowering on a hot evening (I guess it’s pollinated by moths) its jasmine-like smell is intensely powerful. We can smell its perfume even when we get out our car, which I park over a hundred feet from our house.

Monday 1st October
Last week was a good one with 844 words written on blog posts and 10279 written of Penny Royal II taking it over 80,000 words. As noted before I started this book on July 19th, so that was 52 working days. It should have been, at my supposed rate of 2,000 words a day, 104,000 words but it works out at 1538 words per working day. This means that somehow I lost about two working weeks. Some of this was because of shopping and a portion was because I did some work on the house but, if I’m totally honest, the rest was probably lost to hangovers. This is why, 10 days ago, I knocked the booze on the head and, as is usual during my temperance phases, I’ve missed it not at all.

Tuesday 2nd October
So a few days ago Kostis told Caroline about a fan of mine being here and wanting something signed. I enquired about this later noting that the book I’d left in the Revan’s book shelf was missing. I learned from Yorgos that it was the friend of a fan of mine who, ‘thinks you’re God’. What with the language barrier and one thing or another all I truly gleaned was that there was a couple here of who the girl had a friend who was a fan. Whatever – just so long as she wasn’t carrying around a sledgehammer I didn’t mind.

The two apparently turned up yesterday at four, then seeing we were on the beach left us in peace. Later, when we were up at a table, a woman called Pauline, who has been a long time resident here, wandered across. The two were friends of hers and she went back to tell them we were now off the beach. I immediately ordered a carafe of wine to settle my nerves. The couple turned up. They were from London – a bubbly hairdresser and a guy called who works in the legal profession. They weren’t fans but they were tickled by the idea of meeting the author who their friend rates (Hi Gavin). I duly provided bookmarks, signed that book from the shelf for Gavin and had my photograph taken with them.

I wish I hadn’t had the wine. I enjoyed just one glass of it and subsequently woke up in the night with a stinking headache.

Stirring the Mush

Wednesday 19th September

Over the last couple of years Nectarius, husband to Eli who owns the raki still and building next to our house, has co-opted me into the raki making. Since he and she don’t live here it’s a bugger for them to come to stir their barrels. This needs doing every day because the fermenting grape mush quickly forms a thick crust that slows down the process. My job is to go out every day, shove my hand in and scrunch up that crust, then dip my arm in and stir it into the fluid below. I was worried about cleanliness and the possibility of introducing vinegar bacteria, but the initial fermentation is so fierce this doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Caroline recorded the last rain of spring on May 19th. While we were down in Makrigialos yesterday it spotted a bit and we were told it had rained here in Papagianades. The roads were wet on the way back and when I stirred the grape mush I found about half an inch of water sitting in the barrel lids so it must have tipped down, bearing in mind that the barrels are underneath a metal roof. So, we had zero rainfall for four months minus one day.

Friday 21st September
There was a discussion on BBC World about the Moslem reaction to that American film (and the subsequent French cartoons) and the talking heads were busily discussing what the reaction should actually be. Just a thought here, but how about behaving like and adult and not throwing your toys out of the pram? I note that there was a complete lack of burning embassies, murdered consuls and riot deaths when The Life of Brian came out. There was also much talk on the show about freedom of speech and how much should be allowed. The answer is quite simple: all of it. This was basically what various Americans have been saying but the good old BBC interviewers weren’t very happy about that and tried to shut them up. Perhaps they were uncomfortable about the way the state has undermined free speech in Britain.

Saturday 22nd September
Wow, during the backlash in Libya against the militias the main target was the extreme Islamist group accused of the embassy killings. It was notable the lack of cries of ‘God is great’ in this protest. These were younger people in T-shirts and sunglasses with a lot less spittle on their chins, which were generally shaven. It was nice to see this attack of sanity.

I see that Mitt Romney has had to reveal how much tax he’s paid, and the fact that his worth about 250 million apparently means that he’s ‘out of touch’, while Obama is of course a horny-handed labourer. Now, just a thought here, but for a country that is trillions in debt wouldn’t you want someone in control who knows how to accumulate wealth? The implication from the Democrats of course is that here is a rich man creaming a fortune off the backs of working plebs, once again demonstrating how socialists fail to grasp that the economy is not a zero-sum game.

Tuesday 25th September
Enough of this political shit. I put down my ranting to me not feeling so well over the last few weeks and therefore having less immunity to some of the idiocy I see on the TV. But now back to writing.

Penny Royal II is definitely more than halfway through which means I’m course to finishing the first draft in November (maybe). This gives me nine months to do the next book and then tidy up all three. I am very much enjoying myself with this – venturing into some weird territory with forensic AIs, strange physical transformations, some games with the unreliability of memory when it can be edited, all of course interspersed with exploding space ships.

Ecko Rising – Danie Ware

Anyone who has frequented Forbidden Planet London in the past, either to buy books or sign them, will probably be familiar with Danie Ware. Good on you Danie for keeping your own writing under your hat and not bending my ear about it. Now I’ve just read an uncorrected proof copy of her book.

I found Ecko Rising a tad confusing at first but intriguing enough to keep me reading and the slowly introduced back-story began to clear my confusion. Being a roll-up smoker myself I could have done with a little more of that background/back-story earlier rather than so much focus on how a character called Lugan smokes his roll-ups. Next I was getting much more into it with Ecko on the move, but then the switch from an SF scenario to what is effectively a fantasy one (and on flicking ahead to discover the fantasy stuff seems to be most of the book) nearly lost me. It shouldn’t have really since any jerk reading the cover will see the words ‘cross genre’. However, a chapter titled 'The Monument' dragged me back in and I started really enjoying it.

Okay, you all know me well enough to know I won’t post a review of a book I didn’t enjoy. Generally I don’t finish such books so reviewing them would be unfair. This book had its frustrations for me like: stop moping and bloody do something will you Ecko, the way characters are introduced making me feel I should have read them in a book before this and some generally confusing scenes/conversations that just didn’t seem to go anywhere. But, the idea of the contemporary (well, near future) character dropped into a fantasy world that might be a virtual reality is a good one and well done. I like the contrast between fantasy characters and the smart-talking technologically upgraded Ecko. I liked the way that the reality of wounds in a spear and hack-em’ world was depicted. On balance there was a hell of a lot here to like, and I motored through this book. It’s a page-turner and I’ll be getting hold of the next one.

Stoves & Kittens etc.

Tuesday 11th September

One thing I will say about the Kindle, especially when down on the beach, is the speed of sales. A lady came over to us who we have seen here year after year – she and her husband take a holiday with their disabled daughter. She’d been told that one of us was an author and came over to ask about that, directing her question to Caroline. Caroline got about five seconds of fame before I claimed the position. We chatted with her for a while then her husband when he came over. About ten minutes after that he was lying on the beach and buying my books through his Kindle. Of course, my then nerves set in: I wonder what he’s saying over there? Is he enjoying what he just bought?

Wednesday 12th September
I’m lagging behind a little bit but Penny Royal II has passed the 60,000-word mark and is progressing nicely. I do get these stops and starts during which I have to consider where to go next or what to do with a certain character. Last time it was the latter and, as always seems to happen, I discovered I’d already laid the groundwork for that character’s story and, once his course was clear, wrote a couple of thousand words in a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, Mark Croucher, who I met during some of my Forbidden Planet books signings, has won a prize in Macmillan’s ‘Neal Asher Ultimate Reading Initiative’ competition. Here’s his prize:

Friday 4th September
What rosy-spectacled visionary coined the phrase ‘the Arab Spring’ and whoever thought the Arabs were fighting for ‘freedom and democracy’? All they seem to want is the secret policemen, with their propensity for giving people an anal examination with a cattle prod, replaced by fanatics who wants rip into those who fail to ‘respect’ their belief in a sky fairy. Those protestors in the Middle East need to understand (as do the politically correct and permanently offended in Europe and the US) that respect is not a human right, but has to be earned. All those protestors are earning is contempt, while destroying any prospect of earning one red cent (or pink pound) from tourism. It’s sad to see people throwing off the chains of autocracy only to don the chains of theocracy.

Note: there’s a large difference between respect and being polite or politic.

Monday 17th September
Ah the cloud is starting to arrive and I expect the rain will be along shortly. In response I’ve started cleaning up our stove here since both glasses were cracked and need replacing, and the whole thing is a bit grubby with rust here and there. As is always the case when I start on a job like this it’s turning out more difficult than expected. The screws into the clamps that hold the glass in place are completely seized in place. On the first door I had to drill down the centre of them with a small drill, grind the heads off, then drill them out larger and re-tap the holes. Of course a drill broke off in one of these so I had to use a Dremel to grind that out before drilling for a larger thread (M6 to M8). I guess all those years in engineering still have their use.

Tuesday 18th September
It was interesting hearing Salman Rushdie talking yesterday. As he pointed out, the protestors and preachers in the Middle East are using words like blasphemy, apostasy and heresy, which are all from a medieval vocabulary. The interviewer was pushing Rushdie, suggesting he had been a bit too provocative, but he wouldn’t back down. When asked about how we in the west should respond he was quite firm: we should adhere to the principles of freedom and free speech, and we should be braver. Are you listening Hillary Clinton?

And just to finish on a positive note. Penny Royal II is now past the halfway mark, and the disappearing kittens returned – the cynical old bastard writing this blog being wrong:

Sauce and Skyscrapers

Wednesday 5th September

Somebody asked me on Twitter about my chilli sauce recipe. It’s quite simple: I put half a kilo of chillies and a bulb of garlic through a food processor (green bits removed from the chillies and the garlic peeled, obviously). This lot goes into a saucepan with two cups of vinegar and two cups of sugar and a dessert spoon full of salt. I bring this to the boil for about five minutes, take it off the boil to stir in corn flour (mixed with a bit of cold water) to thicken it, boil it up again then put it into hot jars or bottles – use those with metal lids. This is the basic recipe but variations include adding red peppers or tomatoes to bulk it out and bring the heat down a bit, and another recent variation where I’ve added root ginger which adds another dimension to the heat. I might also try adding Cretan basil too since masses of the stuff grows here. I also heard about a chilli dressing in which peaches are used and, since we’ll be getting good crops of peaches henceforth, I might try something with them. Here’s our very first crop:

Saturday 8th September
I just watched a program on BBC World about Shanghai which was quite interesting and rather confirms my contention that in the next ten years we’ll be seeing Chinese on the beach here and buying holiday homes in the surrounding area. However, I just kept on cringing every time I heard the tagline of this program: ‘Shanghai, the city where skyscrapers grow faster than trees’. No shit Sherlock! Whoever made that one up really needs to get out of the office, and out of the city a bit more. Perhaps the BBC should employ David Bellamy as an advisor, ho ho. To be quite crass, if skyscrapers didn’t grow faster than trees those aeroplanes would have missed the World Trade Centre by several thousand feet.

Monday 10th September
Francios Hollande claims he will turn the French economy round in two years. Apparently, against all reason and the wisdom of Keynesian economics, pissing money up the wall by employing more public sector workers and driving the ‘super rich’ out of the country with a 75% tax rate doesn’t seem to work. He’s now got to make about 30 billion in cuts. Socialists talking economics would be hilarious if they didn’t get into power. As it is Hollande is like a donkey claiming to know how to drive a truck.

The paralympic games have been the most successful ever. ‘This success must be placed at the feet of athletes like Oscar Pistorius.’ Really, some BBC presenters really need to think very hard about what comes out of their mouths.

Tuesday 11th September
Ah, recovering at last. I had an infection in my eye for a few days and generally felt quite rough (hence the tetchiness of the comments above) then, as I was recovering, we went for a meal at the Gabbiano and came back here with a litre of cinnamon raki, which we polished off that evening. The next day we went along to a charity event to raise money for a dog’s home here, whereupon I drank far too much wine. So, a couple of days feeling rough because of a bug followed by a couple more that were my own fault. Back to work.

Into September

Wednesday 29th August

Apparently, after four decades of study, scientists have concluded that cannabis smoking when you’re young will reduce your IQ. Putting aside how laughable IQ tests are in the first place I wonder what they could possibly have used as a control in such a study. I also have to wonder, as is so often the case in many ‘studies’, if those old favourites ‘correlation is not causation’ and ‘confirmation bias’ are raising their ugly heads. I would suggest that a forty-year study of the effects of cannabis smoking on intelligence was not aimed at proving that there is no effect. How do you prove someone is thick because they smoke lots of weed as opposed to smoking lots of weed because they’re thick?

Apparently tropical storm Isaac has political implications. It delayed the election of Mitt Romney to the leadership of the Republican Party. It’s not quite a hurricane yet but the connection is there to hurricane Katrina because it’s, well, a storm. George Bush is a Republican and he didn’t do enough in response to Katrina, therefore, if you’re still following this tenuous thread, it can be seen that Mitt Romney will have to answer some hard questions about his attitude to hurricanes, or tropical storms, or something. Not much in the way of bias and agenda then in this report from the Obama-worshipping BBC. To top this off, Mitt Romney the ‘multi-millionaire’ is also aloof from the American people. I look forward with bated breath to the BBC examination of just how much President Obama is worth now.

I note now that Isaac is hitting New Orleans with winds gusting to 130 kilometres an hour and is being described as a hurricane. So in real money that’s 81.25 miles an hour so makes it to hurricane status by 6.25 miles an hour. Phew. Those damned Republicans.

Thursday 30th August
Ah, Isaac has now been downgraded to a tropical storm but is still ‘lashing’ or ‘battering’ New Orleans. I also see that water has been flowing over the levees again and flooding out some houses. So will the Democrats be blamed for this inadequate work?

Meanwhile the wind that arrived here on Tuesday blasted all that day, throughout the night then into the following morning. When we went down to Makrigialos on the Wednesday most umbrellas were folded down, the beach abandoned and only diehards in the sea. However, the wind was dying and my prediction for the wedding at Revans bar was wrong. They got really lucky, since over the summer when that wind arrived it blew for a minimum of four days. On this day it just died off. We took a look in the bar before heading off for a meal, then afterwards took some photos, and very nice it looked too.

Friday 31st August
With the wind having chilled things down a bit and summer heading towards its end it’s not so pleasant sitting outside so much (up here), so we settled down to watch a film Caroline had bought. This was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which I found enjoyable, but with some qualms. There seemed moments of desperation in the plotting, it was a tad chaotic, various excellent actors seemed to be playing caricatures of themselves and the apparent aim to capture the essence of India, old age and alienation, failed. Meanwhile Caroline, who had read the book, was baffled and said she remembered very little of what was going on from the book.

The book was here so I thought I’d give it a go. It was wise, sometimes sad, often funny enough to have me laugh out loud and perhaps beyond the grasp of those who’ve yet to feel intimations of mortality. It was also a little chaotic and not some easy straight line plot. Like the film it tried to capture some essence of India, the realities of old age and alienation, but it succeeded. It was about feelings, human relationships and life, really, and it was excellent. But in the book there was no homosexual high court judge seeking out an old Indian lover. No one went there for a hip operation. No pensioner got a job in a call centre. In fact the list of things that happened in the film and did not happen in the book runs just about all the way through it. The only connections are that some characters had the same names and there was a Marigold hotel some pensioners went to. Read the book and enjoy it, watch the film and enjoy that too but in your mind call it The Marigold Hotel Revisited by Posturing Actors.

Monday 3rd September
If I needed any further proof that dancing to the Wii is effective then I have it now. Throughout August, because of eating out so much what with visitors here, my weight steadily increased (as did my girth), despite my swimming for miles each week. Even after we stopped eating out it just hung on. Four days now of dancing to the Wii for half an hour a day and it’s already heading down again, being the lowest it’s been today since early August. Really, if you can get past feeling like a berk, I recommend it.

Penny Royal II is now past 50,000 words and I am having fun with it. As I pointed out to Caroline, after polishing off my last 2,000 words in a couple of hours, there’s nothing like a good space battle to get the juices flowing ... so to speak.

Tuesday 4th September
Damn but it’s easy to sit up here in the mountains at this time of year and think that the warmth is all but over. The house temperature has been a steady 25C, the temperature outside not much higher during the day and plummeting to 21C in the evening. Of course this kind of warmth would be very welcome during an English summer but here acclimatization has to be taken into account: when you’ve been used to the high twenties and it not dropping much below that in the evening you tend to start piling on the clothing. Then there’s the difference between the mountains and the coast. We went down to Makrigialos yesterday to find a temperature of 34C and a nice warm sea.

Chillies and Sun Beds

Wednesday 22nd August
That’s better: the wind started to die on Monday but the sea was still colder than usual. It died completely yesterday and the sea immediately turned warm again (and I was able to take a long swim without the wind blasting sea water into my mouth every time I faced into it to breathe) and today there’s little wind too. I was also hoping, what with the Greek holiday coming to an end, for the beach to be less crowded, but a wedding party of 32 people turned up to occupy the apartments beside the beach. Sigh.

But things are otherwise fine. Penny Royal II is rumbling along nicely with targets and story threads clear. As I wrote previously: Sheila Williams of Asimov’s has accepted my story (about 20,000 words) The Other Gun. I had half expected it to be rejected as too Polity-slanted but she says I have enough back-story there for non-Polity-readers to understand it. There was also the possibility of a response of, ‘Well, it’s okay but...’ Next, if I don’t use it in my present books, I’ll turn that Dr Whip stuff into a story and bang it off to Asimov’s too.

Sunday 26th August
Okay, time for a little catching up. I ran my niece and her boyfriend back to the airport on Friday and surprisingly (for me) was quite sad to see them go. Before they went they caught some very nice days here with the wind stopped and the sea temperature on the rise again and the same weather has continued ever since (though apparently the wind will be back on Wednesday). Now, with our visitors gone, I’ve been turning my attention to an important matter: chilli sauce.

Having gathered in the first half a kilo of chillies I’ve produced a nice quantity to be going on with, and with the amount of chillies growing and the rate they’re ripening at I’ll probably be picking half a kilo every week. I’m hoping to take back to England a couple of 1.5 litre plastic bottles of the stuff. This time I won’t make the mistake of packing them in the centre of a suitcase surrounded by all the wires and adapters we take back. Last time, after my case was X-rayed, they had me open it – the combination of a large bottle of liquid surrounded by wiring arousing some suspicion.

Monday 27th August
Right, in the tradition of many Internet blogs, time for some cute kitten pictures:

And now, in the cynical tradition of this blog, it’s time for a reality check. Previously there were three kittens but in the picture below you’ll see that there are now two of them – one of them with its eye closed up. There was no sign of the other one and the reason for that could be one of many. I know that there are weasels in the olive grove where the mother is keeping them. There are also sand martins all over the place (bit like a polecat or pine martin) and no shortage of birds of prey. Sickness is also an option as is that old favourite: a Greek boy with a rock. A local tosser with an air rifle is not to be ruled out either – a guy for whom I’ve made up a little aphorism: if you shoot cats all winter you end up with rats all summer.

Tuesday 28th August
Really, some people just don’t get it. The batches of sun beds on the beach are owned by various establishments fronting the beach – they in fact pay rent for their section of beach and the number of sun beds on it. The ‘free for customers’ concept is a fairly recent one, brought about by the steady decline in trade. If you use a sun bed and don’t buy anything from the bar or restaurant owning it you’ll get charged by that establishment because it is, well, a business and not a social service. Charges for a pair of sun beds, plus umbrella, range from €5 to €10 on Crete. Therefore, if two of the four or five of you buy a bottle of water each at 60 cents, while the rest of you get your food and drink from the local shop, if you chop and change between sun beds while you’re there – occupying one of each pair so arriving couples cannot use them – and leave all your stuff scattered across them while you’re off for three hours eating a meal elsewhere, it is not beyond the bounds of reason to understand that the bar owner is going to be a little miffed.

The last few days have been hot, but not according to the thermometer. When outside up here it felt like it was in the 30s yet was in the late 20s, while down in Makrigialos it’s felt like it was 40C yet the thermometer read 30. The reason for this of course was humidity, which seemed to reach saturation point yesterday with the gravel between the bar and the beach looking like it had been hosed down, skin feeling clammy, dew dripping from the tamarisk trees and beach bags and clothing turned dark with damp. Now all is changing with the North wind coming back (predicted to be force 8 but just breezy up here at the moment) and the temperature here reading a few degrees down but feeling much lower. This bodes ill for the wedding ceremony due to be conducted at Revans bar on Wednesday. I predict sand in the buffet, the bride hanging onto her skirt and hat as she enters and any sound recording marred by the flapping of umbrellas and the roar of the wind.

My decision to write the trilogy of Penny Royal books all at once has been proved the right one. I’ve already gone back to the first book to alter a conversation by adding just a couple of lines, but they’re critical for the book I’m on now. Next I’ll be going back to alter the history of Riss – an assassin drone made in the shape of an ancient prador parasite (which resembles a cobra with an ovipositor extending from its tail, small grasping limbs under its hood and a third eye on top of its head). Riss must now be made a witness to what happened to factory station Room 101...

Barking...

Thursday 16th August

Damn, after a week of stillness or balmy breezes the Meltemi is back. Bead curtains have to be tied up to prevent them turning into Gordian tangles, chairs and tables are going walkabout outside. Our flowering tree, which we were told was a datura but which might be (according to Barry Arrowsmith) a brugmansia, had begun to put out flowers but now they’re being shredded.

But on the plus side it is still lovely and warm, my chillies are doing wonderfully...

...and nothing is slowing the pace of my writing.

Penny Royal II is at 32,800 words is five chapters in and developing nicely. I’m presently writing a conversation between a King’s Guard (remember them?) and another prador who has been undergoing a rather odd transformation. In fact, if you wanted to nail my stuff with one word then ‘transformation’ wouldn’t be a bad one. Examples abound: the King’s Guard themselves and the prador king, the Old Captains, Vrell, Cormac ... in fact choosing characters who do not transform physically or mentally would be a more difficult option. But I’m waffling, all fiction, in essence, is about transformation.

Friday 17th August
I would like to suggest, just mildly and by the way, as a point of discussion, that dog owners who allow their dogs to yip, yap or bark continually, especially in a hot country where most people leave their windows open, should be strung up from the nearest lamppost with a choke chain. I would just like to raise the point that while Tinkerbell’s yip yip yipping might be cute to you, that your neighbour is steadily emitting steam from his ears and would like to come round and stamp it into a fluffy smear on the floor. I would further like to suggest that Tyson’s deep and loud bark, to which your main reaction is an ineffectual ‘now now then’ and a secretive tensing of your testicles, is extremely irritating to others. Perhaps you should also consider that getting yourself a dog is not a great idea if you’re going to leave it alone either in the house or tied up in the back yard all day while you’re at work. You know, there is something about the continual yapping of a dog that makes me want to dress up in dark clothing, black out by face, and take a little wander in the darkness with a very large knife.
I’m just sayin’.

Monday 20th August
It’s starting to feel autumnal here already, but that may well be due to the constant wind having cooled everything off. It’s also the case, as ever, that when it turns hot in Britain it turns cooler here. I’m sure some weather forecaster would be explain to me why – doubtless something to do with where high pressure and low pressure cells are sitting etc. Hopefully it’s not going to be downhill from now on and we’ll get a rise in temperature from today what with the wind having eased off.

Tuesday 21st August
Closing in on 40,000 words with Penny Royal II. Time to introduce Factory Station Room 101...

Ah, good news from Sheila Williams: my story The Other Gun has been accepted for Asimov's.

Oh, and here's an interview for SFX.

Writing and Swimming

Thursday 9th August

Okay, getting things in order. Over here on the Tor blog (that’s Tor Macmillan not Tor US) there’s a survey about my books, about what you like best, and some prizes to be won including my entire back catalogue and some signed artwork.

Penny Royal II now stands at 22,152 words and it’s been 22 days since I started on it. Obviously this averages out at 1,000 words a day but then three weekends have to be subtracted, two days spent on the short story The Other Gun, a day picking up relatives from Iraklion and a day spent on interviews and other ephemera, so 12 days, which gives me an average of 1846, so just a spit away from the word count I aim for. Working on that basis this means I should have the book done by about Christmas then, all being well, a third one done well before it’s time for me to deliver the first of the three. Well, that’s the plan anyhow.

Friday 10th August
Damn, what happened this morning? I woke up at around about 5.00 and couldn’t get back to sleep so got up at 6.00. I took a shower and then went outside to bucket the shower water onto my plants and, seeing Dean and Samantha up and about, went into a state of shock. These two generally aren’t stirring from their pit until gone 9.00 or 10.00. Now even Caroline is up and about. Perhaps it’s the wind, or rather the lack of it. It had a few more rebellious blasts yesterday morning and then died and this morning it’s gone. So we’re no longer hearing that but instead the steadily growing din of the cicadas.

Moving on to the ‘where are they now’ section ... familiar faces are missing from the beach this year...

Hi David and Lesley!

Monday 13th August
So, with it getting to hot to dance to the Wii a couple of months ago, with one record resulting in me dripping like I’d just got out of the shower and skating on sweat, I had to give that up. However, the increase in temperature meant the sea becoming warm enough for me to get into without my balls trying to retreat into my torso, so I changed my exercise routine. I took my first ‘harbour swim’ in June (I think someone measured it on Google Maps at about a quarter to half a mile) and was pleased to manage it without the rests I took when starting swimming the year before, but was still thoroughly knackered. In the picture it’s from where I’m standing to that line of rocks to the right of the harbour mouth.

By July it was getting easier and now it is getting almost too easy, so I’m not swimming straight back from the harbour but doing partial or full circuits of the buoys that mark the point beyond which I might get run over by a jet ski.

And still it’s not damned well enough to stop my stomach from sticking out.

And on a final note, bar work can be dangerous, especially when you catch a broken glass on the way to the floor, Kostis:

 

Beginning of August

Wednesday 1st August

Okay, tomorrow Zero Point comes out. As usual Amazon has jumped the gun, though I’m pleased to see that it’s up to number three on the ‘New and Future Releases SF’ there with only some tie-in type book I have no idea about above it along with something by a guy called Iain M Banks, which I of course have no objection to. No point looking at ‘Bestsellers SF’ because all the top slots are occupied by G. R. R. Martin books and other fantasies. Funny isn’t it how on Amazon you can fine down a list so it’s maybe ‘SF, space opera, hardback’ yet on that main SF list they apparently can’t tell the difference between SF and Fantasy. Go figure.

Thursday 2nd August
Yuk, the temperature has dropped with this morning’s reading at 9.15 being 24C and in the sky those strange white fluffy things not normally seen over Crete at this time of year. Damn, while sitting outside last night I even had to put a T-shirt on. However, it’s still nice and warm down in Makrigialos and I can get into the sea without flinching. Today I’ll do so again and then we’ll have a meal at a restaurant called Golden Beach to celebrate the release of Zero Point. I wonder if there’ll be a load of single star reviews appearing on Amazon for that book. Surely not, surely those who didn’t enjoy The Departure won’t have gone out and bought Zero Point too...

I didn’t produce much fiction yesterday, instead answering email questions for SFX magazine, writing another blog post for Macmillan to use on their Tor blog, and sorting out ‘DVD extras’ for the books, these being pieces I cut out of the books and consigned to a file called bitsSF (or the cutting room floor). Penny Royal II is up to 15,780 words and I will dive back into it now.

Sunday 5th August
On Thursday afternoon I drove to Iraklion to pick up my niece Samantha and her boyfriend Dean who are now installed in our ruin. They’re finding it quite warm after escaping the lowering skies of Chester but, unfortunately for them, this looks like it’s going to be a Meltemi summer, with that wind perpetually blowing up. Matching the timing of last week it returned this Saturday and may be with us for days or weeks. Kostis, down at Revans, told me a story about a hotel further along the coast that was sued by some German holidaymakers because they turned up for a two-week holiday and had two weeks of force ten gales. Silly of them (they didn’t win), but I perfectly understand how they felt.

Monday 6th August
Yup, the wind is still here ... even as I wrote that is gusted through the doors, knocked a calendar over and nearly had a pot of flowers on the floor, almost like it was giving me the finger. This morning I was awake before 7.00 listening to it gusting and chucking things about outside and now I’m at my laptop early. The only answer to weather like this is to laugh at it and get on with other stuff, which is why I’m now diving back into Penny Royal.

Okay, that was good: 2,000 words written by 10.30 AM ... and then lots more.